The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories

by Unknown

At last, having paddled about long enough, he thought of settling in life. So he looked around until he found a flat bit of shell that just suited him, when he sat down upon it, and grew fast, like old Holger Danske, in the Danish myth. Only, unlike Holger, he didn't go to sleep, but proceeded to make himself at home. So he made an opening in his upper side, and rigged for himself a mouth and a stomach, and put a whole row of feelers out, and began catching little worms and floating eggs and bits of jelly and bits of lime,—everything he could get,—and cramming them into his little stomach.

He had a great many curious ways, but the funniest of all was what he did with the bits of lime. He kept taking them in and tried to wall himself up inside with them, as a person would stone a well or as though a man should swallow pebbles and stow them away in his feet and all around under the skin, till he had filled himself full.

But little Favosites became lonesome all alone on the bottom of that old ocean, among so many outlandish neighbors; and so, one night, when he was fast asleep, and dreaming as only a coral animal can dream, there sprouted out of his side, where his sixth rib would have been if he had had so many, another little Favosites, who very soon began to eat worms and wall himself up as if for dear life. Then, from these two another and another little bud came out, and another and another little Favosites was formed, and they all kept growing up higher and higher, and cramming themselves fuller and fuller of limestone, till at last there were so many of them, and they were so crowded together, that there wasn't room for them to grow round; so they had to grow six-sided, like the cells in a honeycomb.

Once in a while, some one in the company would get mad because the others got all of the lime, or would feel uneasy at sitting still so long and swallowing stones, and would secede from the little union, without as much as saying "Good-bye," and would sail around like the old Medusa, and would lay more eggs, which would hatch out into more Favosites.

Well, the old ones died or swam away or were walled up, and new ones filled their places, and the colony thrived for a long time, and had accumulated quite a stock of lime. But, one day, there came a freshet in the Menomonee River, and piles of dirt and sand and ground-up iron ore were brought down, and all the little Favosites' mouths were filled with it. They didn't like the taste of iron, so they all died; but we know that their house was not spoiled, for we have it here. So the rock-house they were making was tumbled about in the dirt, and the rolling pebbles knocked the corners off, and the mud worked its way into the cracks and destroyed its beautiful whiteness.

There it lay for ages, till the earth gave a great, long heave, that raised the rest of Wisconsin out of the ocean, and the mud around our Favosites' house packed and dried into hard rock and closed it in; and so it became part of the dry land. There it lay, imbedded in the rock for centuries and centuries.

Then, the time of the first fishes came, and the other animals looked on them in awe and wonder as the Indians eyed Columbus. They were like the gar-pike in our Western rivers, only much larger,—as big as a stove-pipe,—and with a crust as hard as a turtle's shell. Then there came sharks, of strange forms, savage and ferocious, with teeth like bowie-knives. But the time of the old fishes came and went, and many more times came and went, but still Favosites lay in the ground.

Then came the long, hot, wet summer, when the mists hung over the earth so thick that you might almost have cut them into chunks with a knife, like a loaf of gingerbread; and great ferns and rushes, big as an oak and tall as a steeple, grew over the land. Huge reptiles with jaws like a front door, and teeth like cross-cut saws, and little reptiles with wings like bats, crawled and swam and flew.

But the ferns died, and the reptiles died, and the rush-trees fell into the swamps, and the Mississippi, now become quite a river, covered them up, and they were packed away under great layers of clay and sand, till at last they were turned into coal, and wept bitter tears of petroleum. But all the while Favosites lay in the rock at Oconto.

Then the mists cleared up and the sun shone and the grass began to grow, and strange animals began to come and feed upon it. They were funny little zebra horses, no bigger than a Newfoundland dog, and great hairy elephants, and hogs with noses so long they could sit on their hind legs and root, and lots of still stranger creatures that no man ever saw alive. But still Favosites lay in the ground.